Album Review: TV Tube Heart, Radiators From Space

One of the first punk bands anywhere in the world to release an album, Dublin’s Radiators From Space were out of the traps and manning the barricades before much of the class of ‘77 had even learned that second guitar chord.

With an original line-up featuring the late Phil Chevron, Steve Rapid, Pete Holidai, Jimmy Crashe and Mark Megaray (also sadly no longer with us), their influence and inspiration – from the Pogues to U2 and beyond – is still felt today. With an overriding theme of media brainwashing, their debut was raved about by Niall Stokes in Hot Press and rightly hailed by far-off Rolling Stone magazine as “a significant record of the times.”

This lavishly presented re-issue includes the full 13-track album, taken from new transfers of the original master tape and includes gems such as the terrific opener ‘Television Screen’, the cheeky ‘Sunday World’ and the insistent ‘Enemies’ – all conveying urgency and energy in equal measure. In addition, a previously unreleased, “live in the studio” recording of selected tracks and a handful of covers includes The Flaming Groovies ‘Teenage Head’ and ‘Try and Stop Me’ (The Creation). There are also a couple of tracks from a cassette-only release (featuring alternative Steve Rapid-sung versions of ‘Blitzin’ at the Ritz’ and ‘Not Too Late’. Five tracks recorded at The Radiators’ London debut at the Vortex in September ‘77 superbly capture the chaos of the punk scene. Also included are singles mixes of ‘Psychotic Reaction’, ‘Love Detective’ and ‘Television Screen’.

Released on the legendary Chiswick label, run by London-based Irish expats Ted Carroll and Roger Armstrong (and the original home of the Rads), the accompanying 22-page booklet is exhaustively comprehensive, featuring a band history, press-cuttings of reviews and interviews, along with record covers and, of course, photos of the band in all their plastic white sun-glassed glory.

There was more to punk than raw aggression and “we don’t care” posturing – and the Radiators From Space understood instinctively that tunes mattered just as much as sentiment – an approach they perfected on their second album, Ghostown. As our old friend, the late George Byrne, never tired of repeating, “just because you mean it, doesn’t mean it’s any good.”

The Radiators meant it and they were very good indeed.